Without commercial refrigerators, modern restaurants and supermarkets would function quite differently. They would no longer be able to store large cuts of meat for days at a time and be able to transport huge orders of frozen dinners, vegetables, ice cream, and milk from the distributor to their stores and kitchens. Indeed, without high-volume, low-temperature refrigerators, there would not be as many food industries and restaurants in business today.

Refrigerators were in use as far back as the early 1800s, when Michael Farady of London and Dr. John Goorie of Florida separately created cooling machines with liquefied ammonia. However, commercial refrigerators did not become practical until the 1890s, when mechanical refrigeration was utilized to freeze and store fish, dairy and meat packing products. At that time, refrigeration technologies were applied to railroad cars during transportation, and were placed in grocery stores to facilitate healthy food storage for customers.

Today's commercial refrigerators come in all shapes and sizes, from small tabletop soda coolers to warehouse-sized industrial freezers. The most common are large but serviceable and feature large doors, many different shelves and drawer options, and highly controlled and programmable temperature thermostats. Auto defrost is a given for most of these units, as are energy-saving settings and anti-leak preventative designs.

Glass-Door Commercial Refrigerators for Displays

Because catching the eye is so important to supermarkets, ice cream parlors, and flower stores, most refrigerator manufacturers offer models with built-in glass doors. These are designed to both keep the temperature low and allow customers to recognize and scan the products through the glass easily and quickly. Although these refrigerators take a bit more energy to run (due to some insulation loss through the glass), they are still very useful and can lead to higher purchasing rates.